INSURANCE
Esure planning demerger
Britain’s Esure Group PLC said it is to list its price comparison Web site, Gocompare.com, separately on the London Stock Exchange, following a strategic review of its business. Esure, which provides insurance products to drivers, home owners, pet owners and tourists in Britain, said it expects the demerger to occur in the fourth quarter of this year. Costs related to the demerger are expected to be about £19 million (US$25 million), Esure said. Gocompare.com posted a profit of £23.3 million, it said.
AVIATION
Boeing lifts China forecast
Boeing Co lifted its forecast for aircraft demand in China in the next two decades, saying a rising middle class would spur leisure and business travel. The plane maker projects demand in China for 6,810 aircraft valued at US$1.025 trillion, making the nation the first trillion-dollar aviation market in its forecast, Boeing said in a statement distributed in Beijing yesterday. The aircraft maker last year predicted China would need 6,330 new planes worth US$950 billion in the next two decades. Boeing forecast that China would need 5,110 new single-aisle airplanes through 2035, or 75 percent of total new deliveries. The wide-body fleet would triple in size, requiring 1,560 new airplanes, it said. Boeing also forecast that 39,620 new airplanes valued at US$5.9 trillion would be delivered worldwide in the next 20 years.
PAYMENTS
Visa launches Kenya app
Visa Inc, the world’s largest payments network, has introduced a smartphone application to enable cashless transactions in Kenya, where the majority of wireless payments are being done through the nation’s biggest telecommunications company, Safaricom Ltd. The mVisa app would initially facilitate transactions for people with accounts in four banks, including KCB Group Ltd and Co-operative Bank of Kenya Ltd, Visa emerging markets senior vice president Uttam Nayak said. The company hopes to convert an estimated 84 million of Africa’s smartphone users who still pay by cash. Users of mVisa can make payments by scanning a unique merchant quick response code using their smartphones. About 1,500 merchants have up signed up, it said. Visa is in talks to roll out apps in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda within two months, and in Nigeria by the end of the year, it said.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung shares rebound
Shares in South Korean giant Samsung Electronics rallied yesterday, recovering almost half the losses from a two-day collapse linked to its troubled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, as traders welcomed news it had sold its printer unit for US$1.05 billion to US firm HP. The shares plunged more than 10 percent on Friday last week and Monday after it urged global consumers to stop using its flagship phone owing to a spate of exploding batteries. However, soon after the end of trade in Seoul on Monday, Samsung and HP announced the sale of the printer business. Samsung shares closed up 4.23 percent at 1.527 million won yesterday.
INSURANCE
Veolia wins British contract
Veolia Environnement SA, Europe’s biggest water company, has won a £1 billion contract to provide waste-to-energy services for more than 30 years to Hertfordshire in Britain The project is to generate as much as 33.5 megawatts of electricity from 350,000 tonnes of waste that cannot be reused, recycled or composted each year, the company said in a statement.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last